Tag Archives: Fiction

Do you have anything published? And other things.

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I bartend events on occasion and I get asked, ‘What do you do when you’re not doing this?”

“I write.” Is always my reply, then I wait for those words to compute, sometimes I get a follow-up like this, ‘Like freelance or books?’

‘I write novels and short stories.’

‘Do you have anything published?’

‘Not right now, but I’m trying to get a book published soon.’

‘Oh…” they reply and that’s the end of the conversation.

Here’s the truth. I have written four books, I’m working on number five right now and the reason I haven’t published is I guess I just haven’t.

That’s the truth. With the first two books, I got scared of publishing because they weren’t very good, first novels rarely are. With the last two, I want to get one of them published, but I’ll probably be doing Indie or self-publishing them.

Having written nearly five books, I’ve learned a lot about what works and doesn’t in the story, having never published I don’t bring in any income aside from the bartending gig.

My goal for this year is to publish two books, it doesn’t matter how, just that they’re out there for readers.

My daily routine consists of writing in the morning after dropping off my kids, working out after writing, reading in the afternoon, picking up the kids, eating and spending time with my family then editing whichever book is on the editing table at that time.

I would love to get published so I can say to these people who attend these events I bartend, “yes, I do. I have books on Amazon, iBooks, and a few others.”

I love writing more than anything else. I enjoy creating stories more than anything else and I want to share those stories, but honestly, I just haven’t gotten around to getting them published because I hadn’t found a system that works for me until recently.

Now that I have that system, I’ll be publishing in one form or another.

I write short stories and have submitted numerous stories this year to various magazines, but haven’t had a nibble, yet. I’m hoping to get one soon so I can contribute more to my family’s finances, because working one or two days a week bartending, doesn’t cut it.

The Marionnette in the Writer’s Toolbox.

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We often wonder what it would be like to be published.

We steal glances at the recently published books at our local bookstore, stare at the copies of paperbacks at the grocery store, all the while we ignore the little voice in our head asking, “Why the fuck aren’t you published yet?”

This voice stands up like a broken marionette, one string is torn as though it was never attached, but we keeping hearing the damn voice, calling to use in our dreams.

“Write asshole, why aren’t you writing, you’re sleeping and you should be writing, why aren’t you writing?”

The marionette is a clever disguise for our lack of faith in our writing or that we often, without understanding it, try to destabilize ourselves by worrying about the most recently published writer we’re friends with on social media.

Then we pick up their book and think, I’m better than this.

We continue our slog, staring at the paperbacks when we’re buying beer or another box of Cap’n Crunch.

We write, ignoring that damn marionette and keep going for one reason, we love to write. We love it like we love our kids, spouse, mom, and dog.

Stop staring publisher’s weekly, their emails will just drive you mad.

 

Writing…

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Within the dreams of men, are the shattered worlds of forgotten lands.

We see the truth come through in shattered waves. Remnants of worlds fill the chasm of the lost.

It appears before us in great swaths of color and enormous blankets of red and gold illuminate the world around us.

Once these worlds are hidden, they know no futureĀ or care to have any.

Seeing the dreams of men, that is a falsehood that many don’t care to divulge.

I know the dreams of men and they’re filled with blood.

Writing to Help Others.

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We disguise who we are from ourselves. We do this to keep others away, keep ourselves happy and to, hopefully, chase the demons we deal with.

The disguise we use often depends upon the nature of the demon. Childhood trauma is a big one, but hiding from things we don’t want others to know, this keeps us happy, but also maintains the disguise.

Keeping up the illusion gets harder as we get older, and creating ways to deal with our demons may lead us down a darker path.

A path filled with pills, bottles and cutting, but writing creates a forum for our demons. It brings them to the forefront of who we are, and more importantly who we strive to be.

Writing, like meditation is our outlet and with that outlet we discover we’re stronger than we believed possible, even if we must discover it through our fiction.

Fiction is the one outlet which we can put a character in a situation and possibly work through the issues we’ve dealt with through them.

The process is difficult, but leads us to a different path, one devoid of pills, bottles and hopefully cutting.

Finding the right story to get through our trauma may be difficult, but keeping a journal of the trauma and story ideas helps.

In the pages of our journals we find an avenue to get through the life we had, have and hopefully will lead us to a better day.

Writing fiction helps us to find ourselves through our characters. It encourages us to get through another day and discover, we are better than we were told, and it helps us to know, just like our characters, things to get better.

They get better because we keep writing. We keep trying and we decide the disguise, though useful, isn’t necessary anymore.

When we write, we discover there are others who’ve needed the help. Who’ve waited for something to help them through their dark paths.

We write because we know there’s that one book which helped us, and we want someone else to feel the same hope we felt.

We lose our disguise because we no longer feel the need to hide from the world. We abandon the disguise, we get through it and we write to help others.

 

Paperback Landmines, Barbwire and Flies

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The part about writing that always confuses, the writing.

We write, because, well…it’s what we do. There’s nothing I can see myself doing for the rest of my life, definitely not my day-job. I don’t want to be slinging drinks at 50.

I have books by King, Maass and one or two by K.M. Weiland, not to mention Strunk & White.

These books have gathered at my desk for an intervention.

They’re not in a pile, they merely litter my desk like paperback landmines.

One or two sit open, they’re pages alight in streams of fading sun filtering through the blinds.

I see a few of my notes about this, that or the other and find myself drunk from the new knowledge of outlines, plot and character dissection, which oddly sounds like some medieval torture.

I’ve never been fond of these books, but my writing, well it’s on the verge of discovering what landfill flies actually eat, don’t ask.

The headaches are back, the stress of not getting things on the page, when I desperately need the release.

The little synapses are firing, but there’s not much to fire into when the stories are stuck in a no man’s land surrounded by paperback landmines, gas canisters of regret and bullets made of that little gooey stuff that comes out of bugs when you squish them.

I see the books, they’re little bugs telling me to do things I don’t want to do. Outline, plot, character dissection and a myriad of other little things my heart doesn’t want, but my mind keeps telling me, “Listen up, it will help.”

My heart is torn between what my writing wants and what my mind knows needs to happen.

I’ve read all the books, done some of the exercises, but that doesn’t feel like enough tonight. The pillow calls, but I’d rather wrap it around my head with barbwire than leave the desk, because I’m a writer and I have to write.

The writing doesn’t come, it spurts and spills like fresh blood from an artery, cascading across the page in large arcs.

The arcs begin small, but then, something amazing happens…I begin to write.